Nature Notes

LARRY PENNY

The weather last week was a smattering of everything, a smorgasbord of climactic events, sunshine, frost, gales, torrential rain, and snow, all within the space of five days, a potpourri prelude to spring.

Saturday and Sunday were a crescendo. On Monday morning we ascended into spring, three days after its official beginning.

Spring can't be without an osprey or two. It's been that way for thousands of years, ever since the glaciers melted away and left us in the temperate zone. As long as we have been keeping records on such things, at least one osprey has made it back before the first day of spring.

This year was not an exception to the rule.

Early Ospreys

At least two made it back before the others. On March 16, Amanda Sherwin was looking out her Towd Point, North Sea, window when one of these large, graceful birds sat down on the nesting platform there for the first time in the new year.

Of course, we like to think that that particular osprey belongs to that platform, and it probably does, but we have no sure way of knowing. At any rate, the osprey was still there as of Sunday afternoon. We began to worry that the lone osprey would be without a mate. But it was not to be:Dorothy Francisco called Tuesday at noon to say that the mate showed up on Tuesday.

On the same day, an osprey flew by Jeff Willis's Lazy Point house.

Then, on Tuesday, Jeff saw three ospreys around the Lazy Point platform. Two of them had fish in their talons and it looked as if they were presenting them to the third, presumably female, bird on the nest. Then they took off and started diving at one another, as if they were fighting. The birds kept it up for 15 minutes before flying off.

Awaiting Mates

It's very rare when two ospreys arrive back at the nest together; in almost every instance, one comes first, then the second a day or so later. Sometimes an osprey will arrive back and stay on the nest for weeks waiting for its mate, or a mate, but the mate never comes.

Within the next two weeks, almost every osprey platform - there are no more natural tree nests on the South Fork mainland - will have filled up, half of them by the end of this week. A few will go wanting; that is always the case.

Will any of the new ones erected this year become occupied? The odds are that at least one will be, almost certainly by a pair of newlyweds. They usually have a difficult time of it the first year. Seldom do they fledge young the first time around.

Robins After Earthworms

Grackles, red-winged blackbirds, and robins continue to arrive. You will notice the latter species along the grassy shoulders of the larger highways, Routes 27 and 114, for example.

The first contingent of redwings and grackles is all males; the females arrive later.

From all reports, spring robins were back as of the 9th and 10th of March. Earthworms, their favorite spring food, had first come out of the ground en masse in many South Fork lawns almost a week earlier, on March 3.

How did the robins know that? Yes, they are only birds. They may not know a lot, but they and the others know what they need to know!

Alewife Runup

A few piping plovers are back. The first were seen on a Shelter Island beach in the first week of March, according to Judy Lenahan of the Nature Conservancy.

It's always a crapshoot between the osprey and the plover. This year, the plover won by more than a week.

The first wave of alewives has already ascended local streams to the breeding ponds. Jim Cavanagh noted a nice running-up to the Mill Pond from Mecox Bay a few days prior to the recent full moon.

March continues to be a record month for sick seals and seal rescues, the large majority of them harps and hoodeds. On Monday at around 7 a.m., a 60-pound gray seal, apparently ailing, waddled out of the Atlantic and pulled itself up onto the Ditch Plain beach, where it was discovered by early-morning Montauk walkers, Mary Guarino among them.

The authorities were alerted. Walter Galcik and companions stood watch until a young man from the Riverhead Foundation arrived at around 11 to pick up the seal.

Not without a struggle, it was bag ged and carted off to Riverhead, where it was to be examined and treated.

Jersey Visitors

The writer happened to be driving south through the New Jersey pine barrens on March 16, the day the ospreys arrived on the South Fork. The sky over the pitch pines was visited throughout the three-hour drive by turkey vultures and a red-tailed hawk.

The largest turkey-vulture group consisted of six birds. They were wheeling along just above the treetops, wings set at a dihedron; hardly a wing flap was seen. The vultures were working their way north.

Would one or two of these birds be found over Long Island later in the day or during the next day? Probably not. For some reason, not many turkey vultures cross the Island on their way north.

It's not a shortage of road kills that keeps them away. There is a lot of carrion to be had here. Perhaps it's the lack of suitable thermals.

Sighting A First

Last week a brown creeper showed up on Ellen Stahl's oak trees, only a few feet from the writer's residence in Noyac. It was the first to be observed in the area as long as we've been keeping records.

The blue jays may be returning from their mystery hideaway. Ali Cole called Sunday to say four of them had returned to her place in East Hampton Village.

She was also revisited by the sharp-shinned hawk, the one that dives headfirst into the rosebushes after the feeder birds. It did it again, but she got out there in time to chase it away before it could get any of them.

Collared Colony?

Richard Whalen happened to be in Hither Woods not too far from the old landfill last week, when he saw four wild turkeys. A very good sign. They were the first ones reported to the writer thus far this year.

Two pairs of collared doves, presumably of African origin, continue to perch on utility wires, sing, and carry on like native mourning doves at select spots along Skimhampton Road in Amagansett, according to Gus and Diane Antell, who see and hear them regularly.

The collared doves have been in that area for several years now. They were first brought to the writer's attention by Bob Wehle, who lives nearby; he would call up and imitate the calls, which he always heard very early in the morning and which were clearly not those of the mourning dove.

Later on, Marvin and Virginia Kuhn got a good look at one of these doves and identified it appropriately. Shortly after, they were seen by the Antells. A colony may be in the making there. Parts of Florida are now overrun with them.

Late-Stayers

While the birds from the south have arrived early, some birds have shown a reluctance to go north. As of Friday, as reported by Marvin Kuhn, American widgeon and common mergansers were still clinging to Hook Pond in East Hampton.

Thousands of Canada geese were still occupying the rye-and-corn-stubble fields throughout the South Fork.

Richard Lupoletti observed a flock of about 50 red-breasted mergansers and a few buffleheads in the cove at the southwest end of Three Mile Harbor on Sunday. The buffleheads were busily diving and feeding; the mergansers were very quiet, as if sleeping. Were they resting, preparatory to the great flight north?

It's time for the peepers to really kick up a storm. We are about to rush into April.